Sunday, August 01, 2004

More on Cardinal Virtues

Cardinal Ratzinger's little letter on women contains a few additional interesting pieces of information: For example, not only are the sexes fundamentally different by god's decree but even death will not erase this difference:

In the afterlife, the letter stated, men and women will continue to be different, but sex will come to an end. "The temporal and earthly expression of sexuality is transient," it declared.

Why bother with maintaining the differences if there is no more sexual activity? And if dead people become angels, are some male angels and some female angels? Do the female angels specialize in praising and waiting? If so, what do the male angels do? Scold and hurry the dead souls on? Come to think of it, the whole letter (which I have read) is pretty insulting to men. This is always a problem when one aims at subjugating some group through pure praise of its special abilities: all the other groups get short shrift. Though not as short as the group that's being placed on a pedestal: it's impossible to move in that position.

And the following quote reveals the most important part of the whole letter, the raison d'etre for the whole enterprise:

It also warned of challenges to fundamentals of church teaching, saying the blurring of differences "would consider as lacking in importance and relevance the fact that the Son of God assumed human nature in its male form."

If the blurring of sex differences (of which the church accuses feminism) would 'consider as lacking in importance and relevance the fact that the Son of God assumed human nature in its male form', then keeping any such differences between the sexes always in clear and sharp sight will guarantee that we cannot forget that it was a man who became god, not a woman. This statement is why my anger at Ratzinger's letter is a holy one, a righteous desire to smite those who are mean and small-minded. For the sake of all those little girls who sit in the church pews turning their eager faces towards the priest who cannot see god reflected in them.

Support the Blog

More Ways To Support The Blog

About Me

For Readers Abroad

Permalink Notice

Because of changes created by Blogger, older permalinks to my archived posts no longer work. My apologies for that. The year-and-month in the old permalinks are correct, however, so you may be able to find the post you are looking for with some work. Alternatively, e-mail me for the currently functioning permalink.